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A first clip has been unveiled for Emma Benestan’s “Animale,” which closes the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week strand this year.

The film is set in the Camargue region of the south of France, where daring youths participate in the local tradition of bull running. Only one woman, 22-year-old Nejma, takes her place in the arena. Taunting and evading the animals with increasing boldness, Nejma seeks to prove herself the equal of the men – inside and outside of the arena. But both situations put Nejma at risk, as a different threat looms over the community of riders: a bull is on the loose and young men are being killed. The film is designed as a supernatural fable that blends with the classic body horror, and the revenge thriller.

After several shorts and a documentary, “Animale” is Benestan’s second fiction feature after the acclaimed “Fragile” aka “Hard Shell, Soft Shell...

Turning on the waterworks and ripping open her blouse to cap a performance of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Respectful Prostitute,” aspiring actress Stella (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) concludes her audition for France’s most prestigious theatre school with a question from the jury. As he puffs a cigarette and speaks the first lines of dialogue written expressly for this film, an inscrutable juror looks to the ingénue and asks, “Do you think an actress needs to be an exhibitionist?”

In that opening, we find the fulcrum for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young.” Asking the same question to the audience and to herself — with the Stella character a clear analogue for the director — Bruni Tedeschi dances around a definitive answer, turning out an autobiographical portrait that somehow leaves you knowing less about the subject at hand, and a study of actors, warts and all, that offers little insight into the artistic process.

Pietro Marcello, the critically acclaimed Italian filmmaker of the Venice prize-winning “Martin Eden,” has just started shooting “Scarlet” (“L’envol”), a French-language drama set in Northern Normandy. Orange Studio has acquired international sales rights to the film which will be distributed in France by Le Pacte.

Charles Gillibert, whose Paris-based outfit CG Cinema previously delivered award-winning films such as Deniz Erguven’s “Mustang” and Leos Carax’s “Annette,” is producing “Scarlet” with Avventurosa and Rai Cinema in Italy, in collaboration with Ilya Stewart (Hype Film) and Antonio Miyakawa (Wise Pictures).

Marcello penned the script with his regular screenwriting partner Maurizio Braucci (“Gomorra”), as well as Maud Ameline (“Amanda”), with the participation of the novelist Geneviève Brisac.

The film is set between the two world wars, a time of great inventions, and follows the journey of a young woman who was raised by her father, a widowed war veteran, and strives...

Line-up features films by Arnaud Desplechin, Claire Denis, Quentin Dupieux and Julia Ducournau.

Wild Bunch International (Wbi) is launching new films by Arnaud Desplechin, Claire Denis, Quentin Dupieux and Julia Ducournau at next week’s Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema.

As per company tradition, the Paris-based sales powerhouse has unveiled most of its French line-up for the coming year ahead of the annual event.

The Rendez-vous is taking place online from January 13-15 due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Denis, Desplechin and Dupieux’s new productions were all conceived against the backdrop of the Covid-19 lockdowns and political upheavals of last year.

An intellectually stimulating art-house treasure all too easily overlooked amid the near-constant flood of Netflix content, “An Easy Girl” depicts a transformative summer in the life of a 16-year-old girl, but not the one described in the film’s title. That label — which writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski employs ironically, calling into question the patriarchal idea that a woman’s worth is tied up in how “hard to get” she plays it — refers to the protagonist’s 22-year-old cousin, no girl at all, but a comely temptress who breezes into the coastal French city of Cannes like a seductive tropical storm, turning heads and jostling perceptions wherever she goes.

Shifting gears from her widely panned “Planetarium”, Zlotowski delivers a relatively modest but far more thought-provoking project — a Rohmerian moral tale, à “La Collectionneuse,” with a shrewd feminist twist. It’s at once a striking auteur statement (launched during Director’s Fortnight at...

The initial outcry about Abdellatif Kechiche’s film “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” had mainly addressed its artistic merits (or lack thereof) for including a nearly 15-minute scene of unsimulated oral sex and and a seemingly never-ending parade of butts. But a report from a French paper is alleging that Kechiche had to employ unorthodox methods to convince his unwilling actors to perform the oral sex scene.

“Intermezzo” is the sequel to “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” which premiered at Venice back in 2017. Both films, based on François Bégaudeau’s novel “La Blessure, la vraie,” feature Ophélie (Ophélie Bau) and Amin (Shaïn Boumédine) at the center of a complicated web of attraction and affairs.

In the scene in question, a man performs consensual oral sex on the character Ophélie. The Midi Libre posted an account Saturday morning from a person close to production who says that Kechiche had to push his actors to create that scene.

Abdellatif Kechiche’s controversial “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” has given Cannes 2019 its biggest critical bomb. The movie debuted in competition May 23 and caused walkouts because of a nearly 15-minute oral sex scene that shocked audiences. Now “Mektoub” has launched on Rotten Tomatoes with a rare 0% score from eight critics. Rotten Tomatoes posts initial scores after five reviews have been submitted (one of which has to be from a top critic).

IndieWire’s senior film critic David Ehrlich gave “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” a C- review out of Cannes, calling it a the equivalent of a “cinematic lap dance” and criticizing the director for aggressively fetishizing his female characters. The review called “Mektoub” a new rock bottom for Kechiche’s career.

“Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” is the sequel to Kechiche’s “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” which premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. Other negative reviews have been written by The Guardian...

Abdellatif Kechiche is back at the center of Cannes outrage following the world premiere of his latest Palme d’Or contender, “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo.” The filmmaker last stirred controversy with his extended sex scenes in “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which took home Cannes’ top honor in 2013. Kechiche’s latest film reportedly includes one prolonged and graphic oral sex scene that is apparently not simulated. The scene lasts for at least 10 minutes, if not closer to 15 minutes. The moment led to outcry from film critics and the first major walkouts at a Cannes 2019 screening.

“The most important thing for me and this is what I want to say right away, was to celebrate life, love, desire, breath, music, the body,” Kechiche said at the Cannes press conference for the movie on Friday morning. “I wanted to try a cinematographic experience that would be as free as possible.”

Kechiche denied...

Just when you thought the Cannes Film Festival was winding down, Abdellatif Kechiche drops a bombshell on the Croisette. Thursday night’s premiere inspired outcry and even walkouts over an explicit scene of apparently unsimulated oral sex.

Critics regarded the French-Tunisian director’s latest film “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” as something of a massive troll of his critics. “Mektoub,” a sequel in fact to 2017’s “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” was a three-and-a-half hour film (cut down from an originally announced four hours) that spends considerable time leering at women, including a 15-minute sequence in which the film’s star performs oral sex on a man in a bathroom. Yes, really.

“It’s the same length as ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ and literally 60% of the movie is close-ups of butts. i had a mild psychotic break at one point,” IndieWire‘s David Ehlrich wrote on Twitter.

Also Read: 'Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo...

Abdellatif Kechiche is once again under the Cannes microscope for prolonged sexual content in his films. The director’s latest competition title, “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” premiered at the festival, inspiring largely negative responses from critics, journalists, and audience members alike.

“Intermezzo” is the sequel to “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno,” which premiered at Venice back in 2017. Both films, based on François Bégaudeau’s novel “La Blessure, la vraie,” feature Ophélie (Ophélie Bau) and Amin (Shaïn Boumédine) at the center of a complicated web of attraction and affairs.

One scene in question from “Intermezzo” occurs roughly two-thirds of the way through the nearly four-hour film and involves a lengthy, consensual encounter in a bathroom between Ophélie and a man. The scene, which features what appears to be un-simulated oral sex, lasts much longer than the most extensive sex scene in Kechiche’s 2013 film “Blue Is the Warmest Colour.”

That film,...

No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts.

Bringing up the rear of this year’s Cannes lineup in more ways than one, Kechiche’s “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” — an oft-threatened but completely unsolicited sequel to his 2017 bomb, “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” — devotes about 60% of its runtime to extreme close-ups of jiggling female derrieres. And while that horrifyingly unexaggerated statistic may sound like a bit of a red flag to begin with, it only gets worse when you consider that “Intermezzo” is the same length as “Lawrence of Arabia”.

Of course, none of this is much of a surprise. Not anymore. As shocking as it was when Kechiche celebrated his 2013 Palme d’Or win by pivoting to posteriors, “Canto Uno” made it irrevocably clear the filmmaker has no regrets for the wanton fetishization of nubile flesh that separated “Blue Is the Warmest Color” from his earlier,...

Just when you think you’ve seen it all before, director Abdellatif Kechiche goes and drops something as toxically indulgent as “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” a three-and-half-hour-long provocation that will now make the “Blue Is the Warmest Color” director the most talked-about man on the Croisette once again — and not in a good way.

This essentially narrative-free sequel to 2017’s “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” takes the already sporadically clothed cast of that previous film, plops them onto a beach for the initial 30 minutes, moves them to a club for the subsequent three hours, leers at every crevice of their bodies along the way and then calls it a day.

Squint hard enough and you can see what he’s going for. Instead of growing the slight narrative seeds he planted with “Canto Uno,” which followed a tight circle of Franco-Algerian young adults over the course of the summer of...

A simple but somehow atypical shot opens Abdellatif Kechiche’s new film: a serene closeup of a young woman’s face, as seen through the camera lens of Amir, a budding photographer still finding his perspective. Her expression is ambiguously tranquil, her long hair lightly rustled by a humid breeze, all softly lit by a sinking afternoon sun. It’s exquisite, the shot as much as the face, and anyone who has seen Kechiche’s last film will wonder how long the director can hold it there. But then there’s movement, and the camera gently drops and twists to close in on a different area, lower, a little lower, and yep, there it is — her toned, unblemished derrière. Welcome to the world of “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” where, with apologies to Samuel Beckett, form is content and content is form: the female form, that is, and its lower half in particular.

Quentin Tarantino is officially returning to the Cannes Film Festival with the world premiere of his ninth feature film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The title was not announced during the official Cannes lineup reveal April 18, as Tarantino has been busy in the editing room trying to get the film ready for both a May premiere on the Croisette and its July theatrical release. Returning to Cannes this year was on Tarantino’s wish list as the 2019 event marks the 25th anniversary of his “Pulp Fiction” winning the Palme d’Or.

“We were afraid the film would not be ready, as it wouldn’t be released until late July, but Quentin Tarantino, who has not left the editing room in four months, is a real, loyal and punctual child of Cannes,” Cannes executive Thierry Frémaux said in a statement announcing “Hollywood’s” late inclusion. “Like for ‘Inglourious Basterds,’ he...

The suspense is over: Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” will indeed have its world premiere and compete at the Cannes Film Festival, the fest announced Thursday.

“Intermezzo” from Abdellatif Kechiche, the Palme d’Or-winning director of “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” has also been added to the competition slate.

The star-studded movie has been widely anticipated as a festival highlight but wasn’t included in Cannes’ official selection announcement on April 18. Artistic director Thierry Fremaux told journalists several times that day that he hoped for post-production on Tarantino’s film to be completed in time for the film to be shown at the festival. Fremaux said Tarantino was eager to be back at Cannes and was working hard to finish the film by May, which was a challenge because it was shot in 35mm, which takes longer to edit than digital film, and is slated for a July release.

Lorcan Finnegan’s science-fiction thriller “Vivarium” with Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots, Jérémy Clapin’s fantasy-filled animated feature “I Lost My Body,” and Hlynur Pálmason’s Icelandic drama “A White, White Day” are among the 11 films set to compete at Critics’ Week, the section dedicated to first and second films that runs parallel with the Cannes Film Festival.

“Vivarium,” described by Critics’ Week’s artistic director Charles Tesson as reminiscent of “The Twilight Zone” and “The Truman Show,” follows a young couple (Eisenberg and Poots) who have just moved into a new housing development and find themselves in a maze of identical homes and a surreal world.

“A White, White Day” marks Pálmason’s follow up to his 2017 feature debut, “Winter Brothers,” which won three prizes at Locarno, followed by a healthy festival run. “A White, White Day” stars Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson (“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”) as an...

Carole Lambert’s recently launched Windy Prods., which has the Marion Cotillard-starrer “Angel Face” playing in Un Certain Regard, is set to produce Joséphine Derobe’s fantasy feature “Vv,” Eric Capitaine’s “Les bonnes actions” and Manuel Schapira’s “Tropique de la violence.”

Derobe’s “Vv” follows Anna, a woman who wakes up in a hospital room after surviving a deadly car accident. Although she tries to remain optimistic, her return to normal life turns nightmarish as she undergoes rehabilitation therapy using virtual reality. The movie will mark the feature debut of Derobe, who is a well-known French 3D and Vr artist.

Shapira’s “Tropique de la Violence” is co-written with French novelist Delphine de Vigan, whose “Based on a True Story” was adapted into a film by Roman Polanski.

“Tropique” centers on Moïse, a boy who was abandoned at birth and adopted by a nurse in Mayotte who...

The long-awaited follow-up to French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche’s Cannes-winning Blue Is the Warmest Color is called Mektoub My Love: Canto Uno and is indeed, well, long. Clocking in at 186 minutes, this is an overly indulgent tale of insouciant summer dalliances between pretty youngsters set in 1994 Sete, the quiet Mediterranean coastal town that was also the backdrop for the director's The Secret of the Grain. Besides the always reliable Salim Kechiouche, who has been working in French cinema and theater since the mid-1990s, the cast is composed of fresh-faced, ready-for-anything newcomers who were no-doubt eager to work with the ...

Four years have now passed since director Abdellatif Kechiche brought his explicit, emotionally raw “Blue Is The Warmest Color” to the Cannes Film Festival. Many prognosticators had him pegged to return to the Croisette this year with his new film “Mektoub Is Mektoub” (now titled “Mektoub, My Love“) but as we learned just a couple of months ago, the film has mutated.

Continue reading ‘Blue Is The Warmest Color’ Director Abdellatif Kechiche Auctioning Off Palme d’Or To Finish ‘Mektoub, My Love’ at The Playlist.

When “Blue is the Warmest Color” won top honors at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, it made history by receiving three Palme d’Or trophies: One for director Abdellatif Kechiche and two for lead actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. It looks like the trio is going to be down one, however, as The Hollywood Reporter confirms Kechiche is auctioning off his prize in order to finance post-production on his next movie, “Mektoub Is Mektoub” (also known as “Mektoub, My Love”).

Read More: Abdellatif Kechiche Will Not Be at Cannes With His ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ Follow-Up — Here’s Why

Kechiche had been editing the film, his first since “Blue is the Warmest Color,” when the production’s financing bank blocked its line of credit. In order to avoid a hiatus, Kechiche is selling his Palme as well as other items from his filmography, including oil paintings from his Cannes winner.

Fledgling Canadian distributor indulges in French passion.

Montreal-based upstart MK2 | Mile End has snapped up rights to a number of French auteur-driven titles led by Mathieu Amalric’s Un Certain Regard opener Barbara (pictured).

The distributor, recently launched by Paris-based MK2 and Metropole Films co-founding MD Charles Tremblay, struck a deal with Gaumont also yielded Guillaume Gallienne’s Maryline.

MK2 | Mile End acquired two from Pathé – Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub Is Mektoub and Xavier Beauvois’ The Guardians, both of which are in post.

The distributor has signed three from Memento, taking Berlinale premiere The Midwife by Martin Provost, Xavier Giannoli’s in-production The Apparition, and Claire Darling by Julie Bertuccelli, which will star Catherine Deneuve and her daughter Chiara Mastroianni.

Rounding out the spree are Cédric Klapisch’s Back To Burgundy from StudioCanal, and Jean-Stephane Bron’s The Paris Opera from Les Films du Losange.

As part of its exclusive output deal with MK2 Films, MK2 l [link...

Fledgling Canadian distributor indulges in French passion.

Montreal-based upstart MK2 | Mile End has snapped up rights to a number of French auteur-driven titles led by Mathieu Amalric’s Un Certain Regard opener Barbara (pictured).

The distributor, recently launched by Paris-based MK2 and Metropole Films co-founding MD Charles Tremblay, struck a deal with Gaumont also yielded Guillaume Gallienne’s Maryline.

MK2 | Mile End acquired two from Pathé – Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub Is Mektoub and Xavier Beauvois’ The Guardians, both of which are in post.

The distributor has signed three from Memento, taking Berlinale premiere The Midwife by Martin Provost, Xavier Giannoli’s in-production The Apparition, and Claire Darling by Julie Bertuccelli, which will star Catherine Deneuve and her daughter Chiara Mastroianni.

Rounding out the spree are Cédric Klapisch’s Back To Burgundy from StudioCanal, and Jean-Stephane Bron’s The Paris Opera from Les Films du Losange.

As part of its exclusive output deal with MK2 Films, MK2 l [link...

Cannes to show TV series, Netflix original and Vr installation.

The Cannes Film Festival has revealed one of its most radical line-ups ever this morning in Paris.

Check out the full line-up Here.

The high church of cinema and celluloid will screen two TV series, two Netflix originals and a Vr installation as part of its line-up.

Alongside anticipated competition films from art-house heavyweights including Michael Haneke, Todd Haynes, Sergei Loznitsa, Hong Sangsoo, François Ozon and Lynne Ramsay will be Netflix’s first original production: Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja (below). The streaming giant also has The Meyerowitz Stories by Noah Baumbach in Official Selection – an acquisition it has labelled a Netflix original.

While Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux has previously resisted the lure of screening TV, a trend embraced by other major film festivals, this year Cannes will break with tradition to show the first two episodes of David Lynch’s upcoming Twin Peaks series and episodes...

Abdellatif Kechiche won the Palme d'Or in 2013 with Blue Is the Warmest Color, and while he has been widely anticipated to be making a return to the Cannes Film Festival with his latest work, Mektoub Is Mektoub, he says it will not hit the Croisette next month. The filmmaker told Nice Matin this week that he is in a contractual dispute over Mektoub that will prevent it from making Thierry Frémaux's Official Selection when it is unveiled next Thursday. However, the other…...

Production blocked on Mektoub Is Mektoub after director delivered two films rather than one.

Franco-Tunisian Palme d’Or winner Abdellatif Kechiche’s upcoming feature production Mektoub Is Mektoub has been high-up on Cannes 2017 prediction and wish-lists in recent weeks.

But the Blue Is The Warmest Colour director told regional French newspaper Nice Matin this week that it will not go to Cannes this year because it is blocked in the editing room due to a contractual dispute with France Télévisions.

At the heart of the issue is the fact that the production - based on François Bégaudeau’s novel La blessure, la vraie - was conceived as a single film but has morphed into two films, Les dés sont jetés (which translates as “the dice are thrown”) and Pray For Jack.

“I signed with several financial partners including France Télévisions, Canal+ and Pathé Films. I was committed to making one film and in the end, there are two...

There goes our bracket. Abdellatif Kechiche was rumored to be returning to Cannes this year with “Mektoub Is Mektoub,” the director’s follow-up to his Palme d’Or–winning “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” but it now appears that he won’t make it after all. In an interview with Nice-Matin (conducted in French, so forgive us if anything is lost in translation), Kechiche attributes his absence on the Croisette next month to a contract issue with France Télévisions.

Read More: Abdellatif Kechiche Filming His ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ Follow-Up ‘Mektoub Is Mektoub’

“I had committed myself to a film,” is how Google helpfully translates Kechiche’s statement. “On arrival there are two. This is outside the normal framework, which posed a problem with the contracts, especially at France Télévisions.”

Read More: Abdellatif Kechiche Corrects the Record On Lesbian Drama ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’: The Film Should...

Over the past few months, movie nerds and trade publications have been throwing darts at the Cannes Film Festival Speculation Board, but one picture that nearly everyone declared as a near certainty was “Blue Is The Warmest Color” director Abdellatif Kechiche‘s “Mektoub Is Mektoub.” The film, an adaptation of “La Blessure, la vraie” by François Bégaudeau, follows a young screenwriter who travels to the Mediterranean and gets involved in a love triangle, went into production last summer, with details being kept secret (in fact, there’s still no word on the cast members).

Continue reading Legal Woes Will Keep Abdellatif Kechiche’s ‘Mektoub Is Mektoub’ Out Of Cannes, Project Has Expanded Into 2 Films at The Playlist.

Screen investigates which films from around the world could launch on the Croisette, including on opening night.

With just over a month to go before the line-up for this year’s Cannes Film Festival is unveiled in Paris, Croisette predictions and wish lists are hitting the web thick and fast.

Screen’s network of correspondents and contributors around the world have been putting out feelers to get a sense of what might or might not make it to the Palais du Cinéma or one of the parallel sections.

Just like the Oscars, this year’s festival is likely to unfold amid a politically-charged atmosphere. Beyond Trump and the rise of populism across the globe, France will be digesting the result of its own presidential election on May 7. Against this background, the festival will be feting its 70th edition.

Below, Screen reveals which titles might - and might not - be in the running for a place at the...